Google says Chrome will display a warning if it identifies a download that might be planning to mess with your browsing experience - such as changing your homepage without permission, or meddling with your browser settings.

ThreatTrack security researcher Chris Boyd has detailed the latest in a growing number of attacks posing as “Facebook Profile Viewer” applications, but which actually aim to make sinister changes to victims’ web browsers.

A Russian security researcher has earned himself a tidy $60,000 by demonstrating how he could waltz past the security sandbox in Google’s Chrome browser to run unauthorised code on fully-patched Windows 7 computers.